After several suicides and suicide attempts at Foxconn's factories, including this one in Shenzhen's Guanlan neighborhood, the company installed netting to discourage employees from jumping off its buildings.
Jay Greene/CNET

Working conditions at the plants that make many of our favorite consumer electronics have long been a subject of concern -- even for those manufacturers that contract with them.

Employees at Foxconn factories in China have committed suicide, jumping from buildings. Explosions have injured and even killed workers at plants run by Foxconn and another contact manufacturer, Pegatron. And pay has been often barely enough for Chinese workers to get make ends meet and send a bit home to their families.

Those issues came to a head after an exhaustive New York Times report on working conditions at Foxconn. Activists put increasing pressure on Foxconn and Apple, without a doubt the most high-profile gadget maker to be associated with the story this year since it contracts with Foxconn to make its iPhones, iPads, and iPods. Workers even rioted. The Fair Labor Association in March issued a report citing Foxconn for a number of work standards violations. Both Foxconn and Apple agreed to improve conditions, notably bumping pay for the hundreds of thousands of workers who create the gadgets. But workers' rights groups worry that as the spotlight fades, working conditions will deteriorate again.

About the author

Jay Greene, a CNET senior writer, works from Seattle and focuses on investigations and analysis. He's a former Seattle bureau chief for BusinessWeek and author of the book "Design Is How It Works: How the Smartest Companies Turn Products into Icons" (Penguin/Portfolio).
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